Tips and Tools

2013 Mac Pro - Internal Storage

The 2013 Mac Pro will come standard with a Solid State Drive (SSD) connected via a PCIe port for faster data transfer rates as compared to standard SATA III. This is definitely one of the faster options that will be available on the market. The downside is the internal SSDs are of limited size. The base option is 256GB, configurable to 512GB or 1TB upon purchase. There is only one drive slot as well, so again, internal drive bay expansion is limited. This was a definite design decision on the part of Apple, however. They are pushing Thunderbolt peripherals very aggressively with this machine, the idea being you would just use Thunderbolt connected media for external bulk storage. The drive slot is user-accessible, so the drive can be upgraded or replaced after purchase.

There are no standard hard drives offered with the 2013 Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro will only use PCIe Flash Based Storage internally. It is fast, potentially up to 2.5 times faster than SATA based SSDs, and up to 10 times faster than a 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, but with only one slot, it is not particularly expandable. Upgrading to the relatively modest maximum 1TB of internal storage upon purchase will most likely be fairly expensive, though the drive slot being user-accessible makes it a possibility to wait and upgrade at a later date when PCIe SSD drives start to become more inexpensive.

Up to 12TB of internal storage in bays 1 through 4 using hard drives or solid-state drives

No optical drive

18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

One open optical drive bay for optional second SuperDrive

2013 Mac Pro SuperDrive

The new Mac Pro does not come with an optical drive internally. This should not present many problems with program installation as so many programs now are simply downloaded via the Mac App Store or other means online and no longer require installation disks. Unfortunately, for users who need to burn DVDs or CDs, they will need to use an external SuperDrive, connected via one of the many ports the 2013 Mac Pro offers on the back of the machine.